Adam Anderson

3X

World Freestyle

'08, '16

FS1 Championship

2016

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How did you get started competing on the Monster Jam circuit?
Adam Anderson: I pretty much had no choice. It’s always been my life. It’s all I ever knew, from the beginning all I ever knew was Monster Jam trucks. It was the regular daily living that my Dad created when I was a baby. That was the start of things back then, now today it’s such a huge thing that my Dad’s created. I went with my Dad a lot. When I was younger we were gone all the time, until I had to start school. Once we were in school we’d go along on the weekends here and there, and in the summertime we’d still go out a lot with him. Dad was gone a lot making a name at the time so often he’d be gone for three months at a time. We had to be home going to school, we had to get that finished up before we could do anything. Then once school was over that was the end of my life as a regular person, I was back on tour. I’ve always watched the guys work on the trucks. I could have just driven the truck but that didn’t seem right to me because even though I was always around it I didn’t know everything. You will never know everything. These trucks are so unpredictable, something different breaks all the time. So just to go on the road and work on the trucks all the time you know the trucks better and I feel that because of that you can drive the trucks better. If you really know what is going on with the truck you are going to be a better driver because of that. When I started on a crew I worked for Lupe Soza, and he tears up more than a lot of other guys do, so on my very first tour of Europe as a crew member he worked me to death. So now I have a completely opposite driving style to him because of that.

You won your first Monster Jam World Finals Championship at such a young age, when you were 22. What are your thoughts about that accomplishment and the pressure to win more titles?
Adam Anderson: My first thought when I won was, “what’s next? You’ve won the championship already so what do you do next?” Multiple championships, that’s the answer. The way I look at it now though there are so many weekends that we don’t get to meet up with these other guys, some of the other guys who run in Vegas, so when I’m out now it seems like every weekend is a championship weekend to me. I want to do really well every time, I want to win every time, but at the same time I don’t like to tear the truck up. I like to put on an awesome show, to prove to people that I can run the wheels pretty much almost off of it, and then still drive the truck off the track. But that’s a chance you have to be willing to take to compete against these guys today. So with a championship I think it puts more pressure on me the year after winning it, the year you are carrying the title. It was awesome, an awesome feat to accomplishment so soon, and I want more of them.

Having won at such a young age do you think in the long term that beating Tom Meents’ record for Monster Jam World Finals titles is something that you want to eventually accomplish?
Adam Anderson: Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. Now I think that Tom’s got a few more (championships) left in him, but I think I’ve got a few more years left in me than he does. So that makes it easier for me. Tom and those guys have been doing it for so many years and I’ve got so many more years to go and I believe I can take a lot more of them.

What do you do with your free time?
Adam Anderson: In my free time I just love to work on old trucks. I love to go to the beach and stuff like that but what I really love is messing with trucks. We do the same things on a smaller scale. Pretty much break ‘em and fix ‘em and break ‘em and fix ‘em. Now I like to go fishing, but I also build trucks to go fishing in. I like the old school trucks.

Do you have any pre-show rituals that you run though?
Adam Anderson: I really don’t and that’s something that I think helps me out a lot. Because I think that I’m a lot more laid back than the other guys. I sit in the truck and really don’t think about what’s going on. I mean I watch the show and enjoy it from the truck and then get ready for my turn. I really don’t do anything special to hype myself up. I don’t have any superstitions but I can say one thing. The fans give me little gifts and trinkets and if it’s something that I can hang in the truck like key chains, stuff like that, I do that, I carry those gifts in the truck with me.